Oscar Wilde

by Richard Ellmann

  Of course we must not look to these poems for any revelation of human life. To be at one with the elements seems to be Mr Swinburne’s aim. He seeks to speak with the breath of wind and wave.… He is the first lyric poet who has tried to make an absolute surrender of his personality, and he has succeeded. We have the song, but we never know the singer.… Out of the thunder and splendour of words he himself says nothing. We have often heard man’s interpretation of Nature; now we know Nature’s interpretation of man, and she has curiously little to say. Force and Freedom form her vague message. She deafens us with her clangours.

  Even Pater does not escape scot-free. Wilde commends his Imaginary Portraits, but qualifies his praise of Pater’s celebrated style. It seems clear that he now felt that Pater’s unwillingness to speak out, from caution and timidity, had a deadening effect upon spontaneity:

  Asceticism is the keynote of Mr Pater’s prose; at times it is almost too severe in its self-control and makes us long for a little more freedom. For indeed, the danger of such prose as his is that it is apt to become somewhat laborious.… The continual preoccupation with phrase and epithet has its drawbacks as well as its virtues. And yet, when all is said, what wonderful prose it is.11

  Whitman and Longfellow are found wanting, and if Balzac and Flaubert are idolized, English writers, including the most famous, are given less than their due of deference: ‘George Eliot’s style was far too cumbrous, and Charlotte Brontë’s too exaggerated’ (January 1889). ‘Dickens has influenced only journalism; Thackeray … found no echoes; nor has Trollope.… As for George Meredith, who could hope to reproduce him? His style is chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything, except language; as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story’ (January 1888). (These last sentences were to go into ‘The Decay of Lying.’) He was more considerate of the verse of his new friend William Ernest Henley, though he objected strongly to poems not written in formal meter. Among other writers, he speaks with greater sympathy of W. S. Blunt and Michael Field, and with some acuteness of W. B. Yeats. So Wilde wheeled about in the literature of his time, lending an ear here and boxing one there.

  Two other issues aroused strong feelings in Wilde. One was Charles Stewart Parnell, who had been severely attacked by the Times in a series of articles on ‘Parnellism and Crime.’ He was accused of inciting and condoning political murder, with letters to prove the point. Wilde and his brother were on their compatriot’s side, and attended meetings of the Parnell Commission appointed to hear the charges. Willie wrote articles in the Daily Chronicle that were highly regarded. In February 1889 came the exposure of Richard Pigott as the forger of the letters supposedly written by Parnell. Like Chatterton, though without his talent, Pigott shortly afterwards committed suicide. Parnell was vindicated and his supporters triumphant. Then, at the end of December, Captain O’Shea instituted his suit for divorce, naming Parnell as corespondent. The case was not defended. Parnell came crashing down, and died in 1891. Even heterosexuals were not immune from public obloquy. It was an example of secular heroism and martyrdom that Wilde could cherish.

  The other issue much on his mind was socialism. Wilde attended meetings of the Fabian Society in 1888, and had become acquainted with Bernard Shaw several years before. Shaw, who had come to England from Ireland a year after Wilde, in 1875, used to attend Lady Wilde’s afternoons. On 4 May 1886, when the Haymarket Riots took place in Chicago, Shaw sought signatories for a petition in support of the anarchists involved, and among London men of letters only Wilde lent his name at once.† ‘A very handsome thing to do,’ said Shaw (in a letter), ‘Wilde being a snob to the marrow of his being, having been brought up in Merrion Square, Dublin.’ On 14 September 1886, at the house of Fitzgerald Molloy, Wilde listened sympathetically to Shaw’s talk of a new magazine that would bring socialist ideas to the country. At length Wilde said, ‘That has all been most interesting, Mr Shaw, but there’s one point you haven’t mentioned, and an all-important one—you haven’t told us the title of your magazine.’ ‘Oh, as for that,’ said Shaw, ‘what I’d want to do would be to impress my own personality on the public—I’d call it Shaw’s Magazine: Shaw—Shaw—Shaw!’ He banged his fist on the table. ‘Yes,’ said Wilde, ‘and how would you spell it?’13 Though he said of Shaw, ‘He has no enemies, and none of his friends like him,’ he showed a benign interest in his work.

  As early as 15 February 1889, Wilde indicated his socialist sympathies in a review of a book edited by Edward Carpenter, Chants of Labour: A Song-Book of the People. He began by finding socialism a new motif for art:

  Mr Stopford Brooke said some time ago that Socialism and the socialistic spirit would give our poets nobler and loftier themes for song, would widen their sympathies and enlarge the horizon of their vision, and would touch with the fire and fervour of a new faith lips that had else been silent, hearts that but for the fresh gospel would be cold. What Art grows from contemporary events is always a fascinating problem, and a problem that is not easy to solve. It is, however, certain that Socialism starts well equipped.… [she] is not going to allow herself to be trammelled by any hard-and-fast creed.… And all of this is well. For to make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

  He praised the socialists for their conviction that art could help in the building up of ‘an eternal city.’ Then he was content to end on a lighter note: ‘However, they must not be too sanguine. The walls of Thebes rose up to the sound of music, and Thebes was a very dull city indeed.’ The article showed how he was drawn to socialism—he would give it full support two years later—and also how he wanted it to be democratic and humanitarian rather than authoritarian in its procedures.

  Turning Ladies to Women

  MISS PRISM: A misanthrope I can understand—a woman-thrope, never!

  The skill and buoyancy of Wilde’s reviews did not escape attention. Bernard Shaw commented on the high quality of Wilde’s journalism. More to the point, Thomas Wemyss Reid, who had been editor of the Leeds Mercury, came to London in February 1887 to be general manager of the publishers Cassell & Company, and recognized that Wilde’s talent could be put to use. The firm had started a magazine the previous October under the name The Lady’s World: A Magazine of Fashion and Society. Reid asked Wilde to look at the back issues and see whether he could think of improvements, since there was a growing interest in such publications as feminism took firmer hold.

  Wilde recognized that here at last was a possibility for a reputable livelihood, and in April he answered Reid in a long and carefully written letter that would have impressed any publisher. It began:

  Dear Mr Wemyss Reid, I have read very carefully the numbers of the Lady’s World you kindly sent me, and would be very happy to join with you in the work of editing and to some extent reconstituting it. It seems to me that at present it is too feminine, and not sufficiently womanly. No one appreciates more fully than I do the value and importance of Dress, in its relation to good taste and good health: indeed the subject is one that I have constantly lectured on before Institutes and Societies of various kinds, but it seems to me that the field of the mundus muliebris, the field of mere millinery and trimmings, is to some extent already occupied by such papers as the Queen and the Lady’s Pictorial, and that we should take a wider range, as well as a high standpoint, and deal not merely with what women wear, but with what they think, and what they feel.

  Wilde proposed to reduce the discussion of dress, and relegate it to the end of each issue. He thought there could be articles on the education of women, and on all the things that women do with their time. There should also be a serial story. Out of his wide acquaintance, he named a number of women, such as Olive Schreiner, Violet Fane, the Queen of Rumania (Carmen Sylva), and others distinguished for their titles or their personalities, such as the Princess Christian.

  Wemyss Reid liked these plans, whose only fault was in being ahead of their time. He proposed that Wilde’s sala
ry should begin on 1 June 1887 but Wilde asked that it begin on 1 May, since he had already begun to solicit contributions. The agreement was signed on 18 May. According to Ross, the salary was fixed at £6 a week.14 Wilde began to conduct a voluminous correspondence in pursuit of contributions. He asked Queen Victoria for one of her poems, but the indignant regal response was that she had never written one. He had eclectic tastes and tried women of very diverse interests; the magazine took on a miscellaneous look which it never lost. He soon found that many women resented the title, The Lady’s World, as pretentious and repressive. In particular, Mrs Craik, the author of John Halifax, Gentleman and other novels, urged him to change it to The Woman’s World. At first the firm’s directors refused; in September Wilde urged them more strongly:

  The present name of the magazine has a certain taint of vulgarity about it, that will always militate against the success of the new issue, and is also extremely misleading. It is quite applicable to the magazine in its present state; it will not be applicable to a magazine that aims at being the organ of women of intellect, culture, and position.

  When the November 1887 issue—the first under Wilde’s editorship—appeared, it was victoriously entitled The Woman’s World, and had the words ‘Edited by Oscar Wilde’ prominently displayed on its pink cover. The new approach of the magazine won approval, and in the second issue a page of encomiums from many newspapers was included. Wilde was regarded with favor, a situation he could not allow to last indefinitely, so that his editorship would come to a stop. His assistant, Arthur Fish, has left a record of the editor’s behavior. At first Wilde took the work seriously, and arrived at 11:00 a.m. on his appointed days; but gradually he came later and left earlier, so that his visit was ‘little more than a call.’ W. E. Henley, who was also editing a magazine for Cassell’s, asked Wilde, ‘How often do you go to the office?’ ‘I used to go three times a week for an hour a day,’ Wilde replied, ‘but I have since struck off one of the days.’ ‘My God!’ said Henley. ‘I went five times a week for five hours a day, and when I wanted to strike off a day they had a special committee meeting.’ ‘Furthermore,’ Wilde went on, ‘I never answered their letters. I have known men come to London full of bright prospects and seen them complete wrecks in a few months through a habit of answering letters.’15 Wilde’s own contributions to The Woman’s World, headed ‘Literary and Other Notes,’ were gracious, informative, and amusing; his name attached to them was a selling point; unfortunately, he soon found them a nuisance to write, and would advise his assistant, ‘Dear Mr Fish, I have not been at all well and cannot get my notes done. Can you manage to put in something else? I will be down tomorrow. Yours truly, O.W.’ Wemyss Reid jogged Wilde to keep the notes going, but they appeared in only twelve of the twenty-odd issues (until October 1889) he edited.

  This was the period when Wilde had not yet begun to go everywhere by cab. He took the tube from Sloane Square to Charing Cross, then walked up the Strand and Fleet Street to his office on Ludgate Hill, at the Belle Sauvage Yard. He was the best-dressed man in Cassell’s. Arthur Fish says that in bad weather Wilde was often depressed, a fact he would register by his step as he approached. But in a good mood, especially in springtime, he would answer letters energetically, consider the makeup of the magazine, and sit chatting in an armchair for a long time. He disliked Cassell’s rule against smoking, and the duration of his stay was governed by his ability to survive without a cigarette. In general he was easy to work for, and the only time Fish remembered his becoming angry was when John Williams, the chief editor at Cassell’s (and later Wilde’s successor as editor of The Woman’s World), brought in the manuscript of a book by a comic midget, Marshall P. Wilder, entitled People I Have Smiled With. Wilder had dared to write, ‘The first time I saw Oscar he wore his hair long and his breeches short; now, I believe, he wears his hair short and his trousers long.’ Wilde could not bear being a butt, especially of someone with a similar name whom he and his mother had entertained. ‘Monstrous! Perfectly monstrous!’ he cried, and the offending passage was removed.16

  The Woman’s World did have an intellectual quality that The Lady’s World had lacked. Wilde began his first issue with an article by Lady Archibald Campbell about the theatricals she had staged with Godwin’s help over the past several years. There were articles on feminism and woman’s suffrage, with women taking both sides of these questions. The table of contributors was somewhat unexpected. The third issue, of January 1888, started off with a long poem, ‘Historic Women,’ by his mother; this, which included a eulogy of the Queen, was duly sent to Queen Victoria, whose lady-in-waiting, Lady Churchill, reported that Her Majesty had liked it very much. In November 1888 Lady Wilde contributed ‘Irish Peasant Tales,’ part of the book she was putting together from notes thrown into an old shoebox by Sir William Wilde. (She had two other pieces from it in the Pall Mall Gazette on 1 and 21 May 1888.) It was in fact a little difficult keeping her in check, and when, in November 1887, Wilde had reviewed an anthology of poetry entitled Women’s Voices without mentioning his mother’s voice, she was quick to let him feel the weight of her tongue.

  Dear Mr Editor,

  Miss Leonard wrote to me to say that she can supply an article on French matters if you wish, as her father sends her all the latest news—

  Why didn’t you name me in the review of Mrs Sharp’s book? Me, who hold such an historic place in Irish literature? and you name Miss Tynan and Miss Mulholland!

  The Hampshire Review gives me splendid notice—you—well, ’tis strange—I have lent the W.W. by O.W. to Mrs Fisher. Lady Archie is the best of the women essayists. George Fleming begins interesting—and is good—but women in general are a wretched lot.

  Did you read Willie on soda water—it is so brilliant—Arnold was delighted.

  Come for a talk on Sunday evening. I have so little time left now—for I must certainly drown myself in a week or two—Life is quite too much trouble—

  La tua

  La Madre dolorosa17

  Filial as he was, Wilde had some compunction about praising his mother too obviously, but smoothed her down by quoting, in a review of a volume of fairy tales edited by W. B. Yeats, a long and flattering comment Yeats had made about her collection. He seems to have encouraged his wife to contribute to Woman’s World, and Constance wrote two straightforward articles, on ‘Children’s Dress in This Century’ and on ‘Muffs’ (February 1889). The old friend to whom he had dedicated his Newdigate poem, Constance Fletcher, was conscripted for a serial, which went on interminably issue after issue, complete with Scots dialect.‡ Contributions by men were not forbidden, but only a few male authors actually wrote, among them Oscar Browning, who had a poem on Bournemouth, and Arthur Symons, with a maudlin poem and then a more interesting essay on Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. The Woman’s World suffered from its editor’s loss of interest in it. Contributions flagged, circulation fell. Wilde gave it up in 1889 to the Cassell functionary Williams, who was to make it more ‘practical.’

  Ingenious Fictions

  Art takes life as part of her rough material, recreates it, and refashions it in fresh forms, is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment.

  Another aspect of his experience was ripe for exploitation. The theme of betrayal, whether by friend or lover, would run through his work from Vera to The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis. By now he had experienced betrayal at the hands of Miles, Rodd, Bodley, and Whistler, and he obliquely portrayed his sense of being wronged in the ironical story ‘The Devoted Friend.’ The treacherous miller, while offering the loftiest animadversions upon the nature and sanctity of friendship, treats his friend Little Hans abominably: ‘Real friends should have everything in common,’ he says, and ‘At present you have only the practice of friendship. Some day you will have the theory also.’ Little Hans has to bear the brunt of this false friendship—he is a minus
cule version of the unselfish giant who wrote the story. It is clearly related to ‘The Nightingale and the Rose,’ written at about this time, which presents a case of unappreciated self-sacrifice; that theme is reversed in a prose poem, ‘The Master,’ in which a young man complains that, though he too has worked miracles, he has not been crucified like Jesus. Victimization as something to be sought after rather than endured was a characteristic touch.19

  ‘The Remarkable Rocket,’ which dates from the same period, is an exploration of vanity. Wilde, though often accused of vanity, did not approve of it. The vainest man he knew was Whistler, who called himself, with a pretense of jocularity, ‘the amazing one.’ Wilde in their warmer days had overlooked his vanity. A later review showed some falling away: ‘Mr Whistler always spelt art, and I believe still spells it, with a capital “I.” ’ The rocket in Wilde’s story insists ‘you should be thinking about me. I am always thinking of myself, and I expect everyone else to do the same. That is what is called sympathy.’ And again, ‘you forget that I am very uncommon and very remarkable.… The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated.’ The association of Whistler with rockets went back to the vernissage of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, where Wilde had seen (his review said) ‘a rocket of golden rim, with green and red fires bursting in a perfectly blank sky,’ and another rocket ‘breaking in a pale blue sky.’ Eight years later he had written of the ‘fireworks’ in Whistler’s prose and painting alike.20 Now the ‘remarkable’ rocket, with all its fizzing, is a dud.§